Science in Christian Perspective

Letter to the Editor

Responding in Love and in Humility

From PSCF 40 (June 1988):128.

Comment on Richard Bube's Guest Editorial, "Responding in Love to Naive Heretics." May I su gest, Dr. Bube, that it is equally important to respond with humility. What you, or 1, may perceive as a naive statement violating, for instance, "the very integrity of authentic science," may well be our own faulty perception of either the speaker's intent or motivation. He is speaking in the Light that he has, at the moment. We must not be sure our Light is the only illumination possible!

Comment on Dr. Greenberg's review of It's a Young World After All. In addition to similar comments to those above, may I suggest that I perceive more sarcasm than love in your review? I am totally unable to conceive of Jesus ever saying: "What better credentials.... !" Nor can I fathom why you would poke fun at a fellow Christian's "conversion," even though it was a conversion of a different kind than we usually think about!

Of course, Dr. Ackerman does present some interesting data on the "young earth" hypothesis. And, it is true, counter-arguments to nearly all (all?) of them exist in the literature. The presence of a counter-argument in the literature scarcely, however, means the argument is settled! To Dr. Ackerman's credit, he, himself, cites many of these countcr-arguments in the book!

Finally, a general plea to all who write for this, or other, journals. Surely it is best to not only write/criticize both "in love" and "in humility," but also in the very sure knowledge that the person whose ideas we discuss may well be spending a very long time in fellowship with us in the ages to come!